in the moment (we're lost and found)
by abbyli
Summary: Somewhere along the way, the little blonde creature came into his life and turned it upside down. Not that he really minded. post 5.08


**entitled: **in the moment (we're lost and found)

**summary: **Somewhere along the way, this little blonde creature had come in and turned his life upside down. Not that he really minded. set post 5.08

**pairing: **beth/daryl, others

**rating: **t

**disclaimer: **I do not own The Walking Dead or it's characters.

**notes: **Another 'fix it' fic from me. I am taking one of the theories of Beth surviving by Rick faking her death and running with it. Some serious Rickyl friendship angst along the way because Daryl is not going to take the news very well when he finds out. Will also explain some of the spoilers that we have seen - especially the one where Daryl finds Beth's bloody shirt and broken cast in the woods...

.

.

.

The first thing she notices when she blinks back into consciousness is the pounding headache that thuds away in her temples.

Beth groans softly, her hand coming up to cradle her forehead. A small cry of pain leaves her lips at the contact and her eyes slam open.

Her hand, albeit purple and swollen, is wrapped up in a lily white bandage from her knuckles to her forearm. Her fingers are puffed to the size of frankfurters, her nails still caked with rusty blood.

"God..." she moans, her voice coming out in a froggy croak. "What the hell...?"

"Take it easy there, gal," comes another voice to her right. "Yeh've had a bad bonk on t'yer head."

Beth's eyes slide closed again for the briefest of moments before they fly open. That's not Rick's voice.

"Who are ya?" she mumbles, peering up at this man who had just spoken. He gazes down at her, his brown eyes soft and sympathetic.

"Name's Morgan Jones. I'm a friend of yer Rick Grimes," the man says.

Beth begins to slowly push herself up, immediately regretting the action as the blood begins to pound in her head once again. She sobs out in agony, her uninjured hand coming up to cradle her temples before she feels the turban of bandages.

"Oh, god...oh, _god..._"

And it all comes rushing back.

Beth sobs again, the images flashing in front of her eyes. Of waiting for Daryl on that abandoned road outside the funeral home.

_Daryl. _

Of seeing that car pull up instead and not being able to move. She was just frozen as the dark skinned man grabs her and pushes her none too gently into the trunk and slamming the cover after her just as she gets her wits about her. She remembers screaming, yelling, kicking, and hoping that Daryl would come.

_Daryl. _

Of waking up in the hospital and asking for Daryl. She doesn't ask for her sister, or Rick or anyone.

_Daryl. _

Of fighting. Oh, how she fought.

And in the end, it wasn't enough.

Staring down the barrel of a gun wasn't something she wanted to do in her life, before and after the turn. And seeing all of those guns pointed at her, of Dawn's gun at her chin and then the blast coming from someplace else.

She was dead.

Or at least, she _thought _she was dead.

She hears sobs above her as she floats in and out of the glorious oblivion that she hovers in. But as she tries to push back towards the white light and where her parents are waiting for her, there is one voice calling her back. One voice begging her to open her damn eyes and look at him.

_Daryl. _

"What happened t'me?" she breathes, gazing up at Morgan Jones. "And why'm I here?"

Morgan's eyes are too damn sympathetic and she is suddenly hit by the urge to seize this man who was quite possibly her savior and shake the truth out of him.

Morgan reaches down and helps her slowly sit up just a bit, enough so they are at eye level with each other. As Beth's vision focuses more, she realizes that she is in the middle of the woods. The woods that look a hell of a lot like her private patch of forest that she had run with Daryl in.

She sees a dark brown tent set up about twenty feet away, a tarp barely big enough for one person. There is a footstool set up in front where a rifle lays propped up, just far enough away so Morgan could still reach over and snatch it up if need be. There's a small Dakota fire pit with sticks and one sizable log set up but the fire doesn't burn yet.

"Ya were shot," Morgan says as he offers her a water bottle. "The bullet went right through the top of yer head. A half an inch lower and ya would've been a goner."

"Well, that's comforting," Beth murmurs as she takes a small sip. "Who shot me?"

"A cop." _Dawn. _"Shepherd, I think 'er name was."

"Shepherd?" Beth repeats. "Why'd she -?"

"From what I gathered from Rick -" _Rick._ "He knew that the trade off deal was goin' to go down wrong because of Dawn's power control and yer temper. Shepherd wanted Dawn gone that bad so she met with 'im and they cooked up this plan."

"Wait a minute," Beth cuts across. "Plan? What plan?"

"I'm still tryin' to figure it out meself," Morgan says, scratching the top of his head. "Rick din't give me the details. He just left me the coordinates to where ya would be and that's where I found ya."

"Where I would be?" Beth says, tasting the words. "Where was I?"

"Not too far from here," Morgan says. "About eleven miles. Yer family was gettin' ready to bury ya and -"

At those words, Beth's eyesight swims. Hot tears of pain and anguish boil over and slip down her cheeks like scalding rivers. The words plant that seed in her brain, telling her what she worst feared.

Her family thought she was dead. Maggie believed she was dead, for how long now, she wasn't sure.

Daryl...

"Daryl," Beth breathes a choked sob. "Daryl killed Dawn."

A statement, not a question.

Morgan nods. "Yea, hun. He did."

"He thinks I'm dead."

Another nod.

"So Rick...Rick, he - _he _made everyone think I'm - but why?"

Morgan shrugs a shoulder, looking just as confused as she felt. "All part of a plan, I think," he says. "A plan that I ain't privy too. But we shall find out soon. When yer well enough to travel, we have t'hit the pavement."

Beth sighs, swallowing back the new lump that is rising in her throat. She shifts as much as she can in her makeshift bed on the forest floor, making a small noise of appreciation as Morgan helps her settle. For some reason, even though she has never met this man before in her life, she trusts him. If Rick sent him, if Rick has this worked out, she will trust the man that is Rick's friend.

She gazes down at her hand and suddenly remembers the reason for her injury. "Mr. Jones?" she whispers.

"Yea, hun?"

"What happened t'my cast?"

Morgan snorts in mock irritation. "When I found ya, somehow it got stuck on somethin'. I couldn't get ya loose from the root so I had to saw it off with my knife. Yer shirt too."

That's when Beth realizes she is wearing an old flannel that smells like pine and gunpowder. Her yellow polo was gone.

"Ya had too much blood caked on ya," Morgan explains apologetically. "I left 'em behind, give the walkers a bit of a false lead so we could get away."

Never mind the fact that some of her modesty was now out the window, Beth couldn't stop thinking about the fact that some of her clothes were left behind in the woods. The woods where Daryl would come back to look for her. Where Daryl would think that she had been taken by walkers.

Oh, god...

Beth hastily tries to push away the fresh tears that are rising in her throat, her uninjured hand coming up to brush them away. Something soft and thick comes down over her shoulders and she looks up to see Morgan slowly treading away from her. She realizes then that she is now covered by his coat.

"Th-thanks," she mutters, pulling the coat up to her chin in an attempt to push away more of the darkness.

"Get some sleep, kid," is the older man's answer.

* * *

><p>He had screamed when he had found the shirt and cast. Screamed and screamed and screamed until a walker had shown up. Perhaps it was the one that had finished her off, he wasn't sure.<p>

He remembers tearing the walker limb from limb, continuing to scream as he did it. He didn't care who else showed up, whether it was more walkers or his own people. He kind of hoped that it would be more of the dead because he would just welcome them. He would welcome death because it couldn't feel as bad as living.

But no one comes.

He laid there in the dirt, dust, grime, and blood, breathing heavily. Each breath was a fresh new reminder that he was still alive and Beth Greene wasn't.

He finally understood the pain that Rick had felt the day that Lori died, not so long ago. The sheer torture of the fact that the person that you love, the person that was your partner, was gone forever. That there was no way of ever bringing them back because they were totally gone. Torn away in ways that couldn't even be imagined.

He hasn't cried yet. He wonders if he ever will.

He thinks about her face. Her sweet face and her sheet of golden hair that had hung down her back in that ponytail with the little braid. Her hands...her tiny hands that had disappeared totally within his own. The feel of her body in his arms, the way her own arms had wrapped around her neck.

Her dead weight...her head lolling on his shoulder.

_No, no, no. _

He had watched Maggie and Glenn, even in the days passing her death. Even Maggie was starting to forget, to push away the pain because maybe it was easier. She was going back to her husband, concentrating fully on him because right now he was all she had left.

He pitied Glenn. To have that kind of a weight put on his shoulders, the need to be perfect and to hold on too even though he wanted to grieve.

And he envied him.

With just one twist of events, one thing changed, he would have that. Because Beth would be here right now and he would never let her go.

He just doesn't understand what would make Beth try to pull a stunt like that. He doesn't get way she just didn't come back to him and let him take care of it. Either way he would have cheerfully blown the cop's head off because she was the one that took her away from him in the first place.

He's angry at her. He even finds himself hating her for leaving him.

And then he reminds himself that it wasn't her own damn choice.

"Daryl?"

He doesn't look up at the sound of Rick's voice. He can't because then all he will see is pity. He doesn't need pity.

"Been lookin' ev'rywhere for ya," Rick says, not even blinking an eye before he settles down in the dirt and muck beside him. He ignores the broken walker head next to Daryl's foot, all of his attention on the man next to him. "Care t'tell me?"

"Tell ya what?" Daryl murmurs, his eyes straight ahead into the abyss that is his existence. "Tell ya how I came back to give her the burial she deserved? And then I found her shirt and cast?"

"Oh, god," Rick mumbles.

Daryl points with a trembling hand into the trees. "Over there." He misses the small glimpse of relief in Rick's eyes. "A walker must've got 'er when we had t'leave."

"Yeah," Rick breathes, taking in great gulps of the cool evening air to try and calm his rapidly beating heart. "Must've."

The pain going through Rick's whole soul is so great. Almost greater than the moment that Lori had died.

But so is the hope.

Hope that this had worked. That Morgan had figured it out and found Beth.

Hope that soon, soon Daryl and Beth would be together and this could all be over.

He couldn't tell Daryl now. He wondered if he would ever tell his friend what he had done because there was a high chance that he had still failed and Beth was gone.

Rick gazes at his friend out of the corner of his eye, his heart twisting in his chest. Guilt flames and he swallows as he pushes himself up, extending a hand out to his brother.

Daryl ignores that hand, his eyes still fixed on a point in the trees that Rick cannot see.

"I think I've slept maybe twelve hours since she died," Daryl says softly. "Runnin' on adrenaline, ah guess. I dunno. Every time I close my eyes, I see her. I see her gettin' shot and her blood - god, so much of it -."

_Head wounds bleed. Even minor ones. _

"And I wonder, what's the point?"

"'Scuse me?" Rick repeats.

This time, Daryl does look at him. His lapis lazuli eyes are open wide, blank and expressionless like the walkers they hunt.

"What's the point, Rick?" Daryl says again. "Someone like 'er is gone while someone like me is here. Dontcha think there is somethin' wrong with that?"

Almost immediately, Rick senses what is about to come.

"Daryl, there's a reason yer still here," Rick says quickly, his voice firm. "Yer here because ya haven't given up."

"And Beth did?"

"No, Beth din't give up. She fought 'til the very end. That is how we go. We fight 'til the end. And the people that we love, they continue t'fight where we left off." Reaching around to his pack, Rick slowly pulls out a sheathed knife. Beth's knife.

Daryl's eyes soften ever so lightly when he sees that knife. Her knife. He takes it from Rick, holding it between his fingers like it was made of solid gold.

Rick carefully touches Daryl's grimy shoulder, his fingers resting right above the leather angel wings of his vest. He squeezes lightly, Daryl's eyes falling closed at the pressure.

When he opens them, Rick is gone and Daryl wonders if he was ever there in the first place.

But Beth's knife is still in his hands.

* * *

><p>A week passes before Beth stops seeing double.<p>

They had been lucky and no walkers had wandered onto their camp. She had been able to rest and allow Morgan to baby her for the most part because honestly, there was nothing more she could do.

Her body got more rest than her mind. Nightmares plagued her of that horrible afternoon at Grady and even more of that evening at the funeral home.

_Oh. _

Through that one simple look, she had known right away of Daryl's feelings. Of how he felt about her and that he was actually _seeing _her as more than the freaked out little girl he had met at the farm.

Realizing what Daryl Dixon was saying to her without actually speaking the words, Beth had found herself wondering what she wanted to say. What she could say. What she would have said.

And now, she knows what she would have said.

In fact, what she would have done.

The truth was, plain and simple, she missed him. She wanted to see him, to let him know that she was all right. And to add to her _'oh'. _

She and Morgan moved slowly. Slow enough so she didn't have more pain but not fast enough to keep her somewhat sane. She knows that Morgan would like to move quicker but the toll of the trip could send her back into her own little orbit.

Her head is healing, not as quickly as she would like. She still has pounding headaches that plague her through the nights, the kind that have the blood roaring away in her ears. In those first couple of days on the move, she doesn't sleep and she barely eats, the thudding in her head killing whatever appetite she may have had.

On the fifth day, they stop and take a rest.

As Beth sits on her first watch, Morgan's machete at her feet, she thinks about how many days have passed. How much time it's been since she's last seen Maggie, lil' Ass kicker...Daryl.

Sluggishly, she works out the calendar in her head. The prison fell around August, the beginning of September. In Georgia weather, the heat would hold on late into the fall, and even early winter.

She remembers fleeing the prison with Daryl, and for those three harrowing days, having no one to count on but him. There were a few times she had wondered if he was just going to leave her behind but he didn't. He never did.

He thinks that she left him behind.

Beth swallows at the tears that are suddenly forming, fighting them as best she can. A stubborn one slips through and she sighs, swiping at it with her uninjured hand.

"I'm coming back," she breathes into the night air to a person she hopes can hear her. "I'll be back."

_I'll come back. I'm here. _

_Don't give up on me, Daryl Dixon. _

_**.**_

_**.**_

* * *

><p><strong>Beth and Daryl's story is about not giving up. Never giving up. Daryl never gave up on her and now Beth has to hold on and not give up on him. They have to make their way back to each other. <strong>

**By the way, Norman is so seriously the Bethyl Fanboy. **


End file.
